Everyone has their own needs. Without a space and support that’s just right for you, you won’t thrive. What happens when we’re in the wrong place? We don’t thrive, we don’t meet our goals, we feel lingering discontentment and disappointment in ourselves.

Three examples of the bad definitions

Having space made for you

I have three recent stories for you. The first is about frogs. When habitat just right for frogs was restored in one region of Switzerland through the creation of 422 ponds – just ponds, not lakes or anything more bigger or more complicated – the population of more than half of the endangered frogs, toads, and newts reversed their declines! These amphibians thrived when even a small space was made that was just right for them.

Define your success, and then work backwards

The second is about bicycles. This one may make you laugh. I grew up without much biking experience, because I didn’t live in a good place to bike. My experience stopped with a 1 speed bike with foot brakes, on level ground, and without traffic. I really haven’t biked since then. Since my kids were learning to be more confident bikers, I was not enjoying being left out the family rides, and a few years ago we bought me a bike. A standard adult bike, with multiple gears, hand brakes, and one that requires me to tip the bike over on its side to get my foot to touch the ground because it’s so tall. After a few years of sitting in the garage, it came out today because one of my kids may be growing into it. So we’re going to give it to them to ride. And me? I finally realized that I will never reach my goals of biking with the family, or going on slow paced errands to the grocery store paired with exercise, with that bike (at least not from where I am now). Instead, we found a kids bike for me. Instead of purchasing a kids bike for my kid, we’re purchasing a kids bike for me; a pink kids bike. Sounds crazy, right? Except it’s not. Yeah, I wish it wasn’t pink. But we finally thought to measure my inseam, and I’m technically too short in the leg to fit a full size adult bike well. Mix that with all of the other challenges because of my low level of starting competence, and the result was a bike that sat unused, dreams unfulfilled. I will define success by achieving the outcomes I want, and if a kids’ pink bike is what will get me to join the family bike rides and to bike to the store to pick up milk instead of getting in the car, then a kids pink cruiser bike is the tool I will use.

Forget about how non-standard it looks

And the third is about gardening. The kids and I have been seed saving, and there was a lot of seed to save this year, so we’ve had hours of time around the kitchen table together already, with hours more to come. During that time, we’ve been discussing what’s tastiest, and therefore what we want to grow in our limited space deck garden again next year. Because that’s how you choose what to grow in a vegetable garden, right? The vegetables everyone wants to eat? Today, after I’d already been hit over the head with “this bike isn’t fitting my bike needs”, I came to realize that what brought us the greatest vegetable garden joy wasn’t a deck full of produce. It was the friendly bees, and the butterflies, and the hummingbirds, who fed from the produce’s flowers, and who made us smile and exclaim out loud simply by being there. So yes, our planned vegetable garden for 2023 will contain some tasty food, but mostly it will contain early, mid, and late season flowers to attract and feed our favorite smallest neighbors, and their presence will be how we define vegetable gardening success.

Can you do it?

Without the right fit, the right support, the frogs were literally dying. My dreams of accompanying my family and getting some faster-than-walking exercise had been squashed for years because it didn’t occur to anyone to find the gear that fit me. And after several years of gardening, we’ve finally realized it’s okay to focus on what brings us the most joy – not the tasty produce, but the wildlife (the produce is a bonus).

What about you? Do you currently have the space, and physical and emotional support, to thrive in your own way? What about after your next big life change comes your way (kids, career, parents aging, retiring, relocating), will you still have what you need then? If you don’t, or think you won’t, what are/will be those holes, and how can you get them filled in? What do you need that goes against the standard way things are being done?